DCU unaffected by service strike

DUBLIN City University was one of the few public service workplaces unaffected by yesterday’s strike.

About 700 staff at the northside campus are represented by SIPTU and voted against participating in the strike or in taking industrial action in relation to the threat of pay cuts.

SIPTU education branch organiser said members in the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) had also balloted against the strike.

“We have around 3,000 members in the branch, mostly working in the third level sector, and the majority took part in this day of action,” she said.

“The participation was based on each individual workplace and many people hold a view in different sectors that you can’t have an industrial dispute with your actual employer if you are unhappy with decisions by politicians or the Government,” she said.

SIPTU represents all grades of worker at DCU, including academic staff, whose counterparts in the other six universities are represented by the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT). IFUT members were on the picket lines at the other universities yesterday, except at University College Cork where they were exempted from strike action because of the effort to clean up after last week’s flood damage which has forced cancellation of lectures until next Monday.